Haven’t read the full thread, so bear with me.
I have really nice even load in Cubase on 8 cores(i7 quadcore with hyperthreading).
But have issues with other stuff in computer that in regular intervals do things that cause crackle at playback, or if recording it stops and give message of dropout.
I have eliminated a bunch of software that do scheduled stuff, like first 20 minutes after boot and similar, various checks for updates even though no network is up etc. But still have an ongoing one - every hour, on 5 seconds distance - that cause this problem still. Repeatable - next boot - take note of when booted up - and within two minutes from that first dropout will appear, and then on 5-10s from that point - all day through.
Spent full day yesterday and still see no immediate cpu increase on any running service or process overall. Gone through all scheduled tasks and nothing. Run auditing to see what processes start and exit - and still nothing.
Next step is to run process explorer and see if any thread in Cubase itself?
I have no autosave on jobs active.
I have this thread a bit below about this - if there is a setting and Cubase it too sensitive to dropouts loosing the sync?
I remember Sonar has such a setting how long dropout should make transport stop.
I will make a test today with Sonar and see if in computer something can disturb audio enough - without obvious jump in cpu.
I filmed task manager in both process explorer and task manager to see when it happends.
Other tips from me
a) Task scheduler in Administrative tools - there you have a good bunch of things that are triggered on various events.
There I found most of disturbances.
b) Security soemthing, also in Administrative tools - auditing can be help to narrow down if dropout occur to a process that is started on scheduled stuff. Look both in Local Audit and Advanced audit to enable those - process tracking, I think it was called.